91ÊÓƵ

Tania Safura Adam is a researcher, writer, curator, and Associate Professor at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). She is the founder of Radio Africa and Archivos Negros, two pioneering platforms dedicated to documenting, researching, and disseminating Black histories, cultures, and Black intellectual traditions.

Her work bridges academic research, curatorial practice, and public engagement, focusing on Black archives, anti-colonial memory, and the historical presence of African and Afro-descendant communities in the Iberian Peninsula. Through exhibitions, publications, teaching, and public programmes, she explores the intersections of race, migration, memory, and cultural production, contributing to new understandings of Black European histories.

Adam has curated projects and collaborated with leading cultural institutions across Europe and Africa. She is currently leading España Negra, a long-term research project that reconstructs the histories, genealogies, and cultural imaginaries of Black Spain.

Johanne Affricot is an independent curator and cultural maker. Since 2023, she has served as Curator-at-Large at the American Academy in Rome and is the founder and artistic director of SPAZIO GRIOT and GRIOTMag. Her curatorial projects include the solo exhibitions Anche Dopo Che Tutto è Finito (Even After Everything is Over) by Damiano Tata; Whiteface by Candice Breitz; A Plot, A Scandal by Ligia Lewis; Path to the Stars by Mónica de Miranda; and Il Mio Filippino: For Those Who Care to See by Liryc Dela Cruz; as well as the group exhibitions Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge and Sediments. After Memory.

She recently co-edited the publication SPAZIO GRIOT Artist Residency. On The Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists (2026, supported by MUCIV–Museum of Civilizations) and contributed to the exhibition catalogue Artists Making Books

Paula Anacaona founded the editions Anacaona out of a passion for Brazilian and afro-brazilian thought and literature. 

The editions Anacaona is committed to publishing women, Black and indigenous women, and LGBT+ minorities. They publish socially conscious urban novels, decolonial historical novels, and essays on feminism, antiracism, queer and decolonial thinking. 

Paula is also the author of a children's book and adult novels, in which she seeks to highlight the forgotten heroines of official history.

Prof. Dr. Maisha M. Auma was Professor for Childhood and Difference (Diversity Studies) at the University of Applied Sciences, Magdeburg-Stendal from 2008 – 2022. She has held Visiting positions in Intersectional Diversity Studies at the Center for interdisciplinary Women- and Gender Studies at the Technical University Berlin.

She was the first Audre Lorde Guest Professor for Intersectional Diversity Studies of the (Diversity and Gender Quality Network, DiGENet) Berlin University Alliance in 2021/22, as well Guest Professor for Diversity Education at the Center for transdisciplinary and Gender Studies, Humboldt University Berlin (2014 – 2019) as well as at the Alpen Adria University and University of Innsbruck in Austria (2024/25) . She currently leads the regional network East in the Knowledge Network Research on Racism. She is a board member of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). And a member of ADEFRA Black Women in Germany since 1993.

Dr. Kia Lilly Caldwell is an interdisciplinary Afro-Latin American Studies scholar. She is a professor of African and African American Studies, as well as the Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.  Dr. Caldwell’s research focuses on race, gender, black feminism, health, human rights, and democracy in Latin America and the United States.  She is the author of two books: Negras in Brazil: Re-envisioning Black Women, Citizenship, and the Politics of Identity (2007) and Health Equity in Brazil:  Intersections of Gender, Race, and Policy (2017).  Dr. Caldwell also has co-edited two anthologies, including Engaging the African Diaspora in K-12 Education (2020). 

She is currently co-editing an anthology on transnational Black feminisms and completing a book focused on Black women’s visions for democracy in countries such as Brazil and Colombia.  Dr. Caldwell is the immediate past-president of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).

Sunnie Rucker-Chang is Interim Chair of the African American and African Studies Department and Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Culture in Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at the Ohio State University. She works on the social construction of race and culture as it relates to privileged and marginalized communities in Europe. In her research, Rucker-Chang focuses on how literature and film contribute to culture and nationalist identities, especially in the creation and maintenance of racialized communities in Southeast Europe and how the demographics of a field shape pedagogy and community participation. She is currently working on a research project addressing the imprint of Chinese culture, soft power, and investments in Southeast Europe, East Africa, and Central Asia. Her research and projects have been funded by the American Association of University Women, American Councils, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The US National Security Agency, Taft Research Center, University Research Council, and US Russia Foundation.

Myriam Cottias is Director of the International Center for Research on Slavery and Post-Slavery () and a specialist in slavery in the Caribbean. She is a historian and Senior Research Director at the CNRS. She coordinates the French National Research Agency program “Reparations, Compensation, and Indemnities for Slavery (Europe–Americas–Africa), 19th–21st Centuries,” and is a former President of the National Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery (CNMHE). Myriam Cottias is co-editor-in-chief of the journal and director of the “Slaveries” book series published by Karthala/CIRESC.

Billy Gérard Frank is a Grenadian-born, Berlin-based artist, filmmaker, writer, educator, and curator whose research-based interdisciplinary practice explores memory, migration, race, exile, colonial histories, and queer decoloniality. Working across film, painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, he draws upon personal narratives, historical archives, and Caribbean cultural memory to challenge dominant histories and create speculative counter-narratives. Frank represented Grenada at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and participated in the country’s pavilion at the 58th edition in 2019. His work has been presented internationally and is held in several museum collections, including the Brooklyn Museum. He is also the founder and artistic director of the Nova Frontier Film Festival and Lab, a platform dedicated to showcasing and incubating filmmakers and artists from the global African diaspora, the Middle East, Latin America, and beyond.

Véronique Clette-Gakuba is a researcher in sociology at the University of Mons (UMONS) and at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB – CAC and METICES research centres). She teaches the course Visual Arts of African Worlds and Diasporas at ULB and is also a lecturer at UMONS. Her research focuses on the colonial genealogy of anti-Blackness since the context of Belgian colonialism, on the links between anti-Blackness, art and culture, and on forms of Black resistance emerging at the intersections of research, artistic creation, and political engagement.

In June 2023, she defended her PhD dissertation at ULB, Experiences of Coloniality in Art and Culture. Making a Black World Exist in Brussels. Bases on this doctoral research, her book Aesthetics and Powers of the Black World. Turning White Affects Against Themselves will be published by Editions Météores in Spring 2027. 

Felix Germain is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on Black migration, race relations, and sport in France. He has also published extensively on French Caribbean cultures and societies. His previous publications include Decolonizing the Republic: African and Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Paris, 1946–1974 (Michigan State University Press) and Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848–2016 (University of Nebraska Press). He has a forthcoming monograph on race and sport in France and the French Caribbean, as well as a co-edited volume on contemporary French Caribbean societies with Dr. Hanétha Vété-Congolo.

Elisabeth Gustave is the founder and artistic director of Monde en Vues – Guadeloupe International Human Rights Film Festival, a festival of films and ideas that fosters dialogue between cultures, imaginaries, and Black worlds. An independent curator, she develops projects at the intersection of cinema, literature, visual arts, and questions of memory, diaspora, decolonial thought, and social justice. She co-curated Nou an péyi rèvé-Traversées de la mangrove, a major exhibition paying tribute to Maryse Condé. A graduate of Sorbonne University and holder of an Executive MBA in Arts Innovation, she creates international collaborations connecting the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and the Americas through artistic exchange and critical dialogue.

Camilla Hawthorne is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Their work addresses the racial politics of migration and citizenship and the insurgent, abolition geographies of the Black Mediterranean. Camilla is the author of Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean (Cornell University Press, 2022), translated into Italian as Razza e cittadinanza. Frontiere contese e contestate nel Mediterraneo nero(Astarte Edizioni, 2023) and co-editor of The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders, and Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Duke University Press, 2023), and Heartbreak and Other Geographies: Collected Works of Katherine McKittrick(University of Minnesota Press, 2026). Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Ragusa Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, the UC Humanities Research Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Leonardo Da Vinci Society, and the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North American Foundation.

Marcia Harvey Isaksson (b.1975, Harare, Zimbabwe) is an artist and independent curator based in Stockholm. She is the founder of Southnord, a platform and triennial that makes space for black and Afro-Nordic artists. Originally a chartered certified accountant, she changed paths after a decade in the accounting field through education at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm and later through post-graduate studies at Sveriges Arkitekter (Architects Sweden) and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (Further Education in Architecture and Fine Art). She nurtures a special interest in spatial storytelling which stems from her background in interior architecture and exhibition design. In her artistic practice she uses looms, weaving and other textile methods to investigate cultural and personal heritage, the transfer of knowledge over generations, and how narratives of the past affect the present and the future. Her works have been exhibited in different cities including Johannesburg, Berlin, London, Stockholm, and Falun and have been included in the collections of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Röhsska museet and the Swedish Museum of Etnography. Marcia also previously ran Fiberspace (2015-2023), an award-winning arena for textile art, craft and design in Stockholm.

Richard Kofi (b. 1988, Wageningen) is a Dutch-Ghanaian artist and curator working at the intersection of speculative futures and decolonial heritage practices. His multidisciplinary approach weaves together drawing, collage, video, performance, and public ritual to explore the layered entanglements between past, present, and future. Kofi is the founding director of The Museum of Black Futures, a nomadic and community-based museum platform that challenges conventional notions of ownership, restitution, and cultural stewardship. Central to his work is a belief in art as a collective tool for collective reimagining and cultivating community-led futures

Michael McEachrane is a researcher in Black European Studies, Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies and Human Rights Studies as well as an international activist and UN mandate holder. As a researcher he is, among other things, the editor of the first book in English on people of African descent in the Nordic region,  and a book with decolonial and political perspectives on Sweden, . Among his articles and book chapters are “On Conceptualizing African Diasporas in Europe”, “Pan-Africanism and the African Diaspora in Europe”, and “Situating Afro-/African Swedish Studies” in 

As an activist he has, among other things, co-founded several civil society organizations and was involved in the establishment of the  of which he is a founding Member. Dr. McEachrane was a 2024-2025 Racial Justice Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights and is an External Affiliate at the University College London (UCL) Sarah Parker Remond Centre Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation.

Dr. Daphina Misiedjan is a Senior Researcher and member of the executive leadership team at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). Of Surinamese Maroon descent, her interdisciplinary research explores the intersections of human rights, climate justice, environmental governance, and decolonial approaches to law, with a particular focus on the Caribbean and Europe. Her most recent work examines legal responses to offshore oil and gas developments in Suriname and advances climate justice for the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, addressing the unequal impacts of climate change on local communities. Dr. Misiedjan is Vice-Chair of the KNAW Young Academy and co-founder of The Black PhD Experience and The Black Academy Foundation, initiatives dedicated to strengthening Black scholarship, leadership, and inclusive knowledge production in the Netherlands and beyond.

Ayoko Mensah,curator, consultant and author, has been developing her work on and with African and Afro-descent art scenes for more than twenty-five years. Of Togolese heritage, born in France, she has degrees in Literature, Journalism and Cultural Management, from France. Since 2024, she has been working as a curator at the House of European History in Brussels. Previously, she worked at the Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR) where she was in charge of the Afropolitan Programme. Her recent exhibitions are: Postcolonial? (2026), (De)colonisations: African Artists Question History (2026) and Universal Animism (2025).

Since 2000, Mensah also has worked as a consultant for several organisations (UNESCO, European Commission, EUNIC, ACP Group of States, Africa Museum, Opera de Paris…) and has been invited as a speaker at international conferences (Africa, Europe, Brazil, US, China). Mensah has co-authored several books and wrote more than a hundred of articles in various media.

Mame-Fatou Niang is Trustee Professor of French Studies and the Founder-Director of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic at 91ÊÓƵ. She is the author of (Brill, 2019) and the co-author of (Anamosa, 2022). Her recent research examines Black geographies, Blackness in France and the institutionalization of Black Studies

Niang is the international curator of the Rio de Janeiro Literary Festival (FLUP), and an artist-in-residence at in Paris, and a fellow at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici working on a project entitled “Échoïques” (Sounds of Silence). She is a member of the and the co-founder of, the Global Network for the Studies of Africans and People of African Descent. Mame has held prestigious visiting professorships such as the at University at Buffalo, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor in French Studies at Columbia University. She is currently completing two books: a study of Alice Diop and the first French translation of Beatriz Nascimento’s work.

Sophie Marie Niang is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Cultural Policy at King’s College London. Before joining King’s, she was the Lumley Research Fellow in European Cultural Studies at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge (2024-2025), and received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge (awarded in 2024), funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Rooted in cultural studies, black feminist thought and queer of colour critique, her research focuses on questions of oppression, resistance, refusal and worldmaking across temporal and geographic boundaries. Her first research project explored contemporary black cultural production in France. She is currently working on childhood and resistance. Her work is published in Sociology Compass, Modern and Contemporary France, openworks, Feminist Review, and Mid-Theory, and she is writing a book on children’s resistance to adult supremacy for Haymarket Books.

Margaret Ohia-Nowak is Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Communication and Media Studies at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. She also teaches in the GEMMA Women’s and Gender Studies programme at the University of Łódź and serves on the faculty of the Black Europe Summer School (BESS) in Amsterdam. She holds a MA in Film Studies, PhD in Linguistics and a Habilitation in Communication and Media Studies. Her research focuses on race and Blackness in Central and Eastern Europe, racist language and narratives, and discourses of Blackness in Poland. She is the author of the first monograph-length book on anti-Black language and discourse written in Polish language (Antyczarny rasizm. Język–dyskurs–komunikacja, 2025), with Discourse of Blackness and Anti-Blackness in Poland forthcoming from Routledge (2027). A Fulbright Scholar, Emma Goldman Award recipient, Susan Treadwell Memorial Award recipient, and Obama Foundation Europe Leader, she works at the intersection of scholarship, civic education, and racial justice. She co-founded and co-directs the Black Justice Poland Foundation (BJP) and leads anti-racist educational and community organizing initiatives across Poland.

Nadia Nsayi is a Belgian-Congolese political scientist. She worked as a policy officer Congo at Broederlijk Delen and Pax Christi. Since 2019 she has been a curator of image at the MAS. In 2020 she released her book Dochter van de dekolonisatie.

Olivette Otele is a Distinguished Research Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at SOAS University of London. She holds a PhD from La Sorbonne and received two honorary doctorates (in Law, from Concordia University, Canada (2022) and in Philosophy from Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium (2026)). She was a judge and chair for several book prizes (International Booker Prize, Orwell Prize, etc.). She was a Visiting Chair at the College de France (2023). She is a broadcaster (Netflix, BBC, PBS) and regularly writes for the press (Guardian, Sunday Times, GQ, etc.). She has published extensively on Colonial History and Memory, the histories of people of African descent (African Europeans) and restorative justice. She also advises on the matter (Welsh Government, the Guardian’s project ‘Cotton Capital’, etc.) She is on the scientific committee of the House of European History. Her latest publications include 'Comparative Focus on Legacies of Enslavement in the United Kingdom and France' (OUP, 2026). She is currently editing her monograph on 15 port cities that made empires through slavery (2027).

Alexis Peskine graduated from Howard University in 2003 winning the first Verizon HBCU Student Art Competition and was the first foreign student to bring a Fulbright at the M.I.C.A where he completed his MFA. His 2007 exhibition at MOCADA was written up in the New York Times. He exhibited in the 2010 Black Arts World Festival, and at Dakar’t Biennale 2016 leading to a solo show at the French Institute in Senegal. 

Peskine has participated in residencies, biennales, art fairs and exhibitions in Angola, Brazil, Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, Guadeloupe, Italy, Jamaica, Morocco, Senegal and the U.S.A. Throughout his career, Peskine has worked with inner-city youth giving opportunities for many of them to travel and create around the world. Major museums and collectors including Peggy Cooper Cafritz; Laurence Graff OBE; the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, USA; The Harvard Art Fogg Museum, Cambridge, USA; Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, USA; and Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), Chicago, USA, have collected Peskine’s works.